In O.C., city pay can be steep, but it's not 'abusive'

Some of the biggest (alleged) swindlers in the history of municipal governmentsmay live in Orange County, but they don't work here.

“Recent revelations from cities outside of Orange County have led to charges that city officials were paying themselves lavish salaries and benefits at taxpayer expense,” says a grand jury report probing “compensation abuse” among city officials, released last week.

The good news: “The Grand Jury has concluded that there are no individual instances of abusive compensation in Orange County cities.”

The not-so-good news: Several OC cities are paying waaay more than comparable burgs -- and much larger ones -- for top talent; and there is “a disturbing level of inconsistency in the degree of transparency pertaining to compensation information which is currently provided to the public,” the report said.

The grand jury found that:

Compensation for the Laguna Hills city manager and assistant city manager/finance director "exceeds levels in other comparably sized cities both inside and outside of Orange County."

With the exceptions ofLaguna Beach and Newport Beach, the number of high-level positions in each city is generally commensurate with its population.

Public disclosure of employee compensation is inconsistent, ranging from good to non-existent.

Most cities don't post the written employment contracts of their executives on their websites, which is a problem.

Compensation for high-level jobs bears no significant relationship to city population.

Laguna Hills, Laguna Beach and Newport Beach, in particular, need to double-back and take a second look at what they're paying people, the grand jury said.

Two cities that get kudos for clarity, disclosure, and general soberness with compensation: Fullerton and Laguna Woods. Orange also got points for paying its exec a sober amount.

And one city got scolded for offering nothing that its citizens could easily access: Seal Beach.

The cool thing that the grand jury did was look at all employees with base salaries above $100,000 in 2009 – not just city manager pay, as other studies have done. There were (gulp) 1,847 people meeting or exceeding that $100,000 threshold in OC's 34 cities.

LAGUNA HILLS CITY MANAGER TOPS OC LIST. AGAIN.

The three highest paid city managers in OC can't compare with Robert Rizzo of Bell fame (with his $1.5 million-a-year compensation) and Bruce Malkenhorst Sr. of Vernon fame (with his $600,000-a-year pension), even though we'll note that both Rizzo and Malkenhorst call Huntington Beach home (something in the water?).

Still, the compensation numbers may still leave some gasping. OC's three most well-compensated city managers are from its smaller cities:

“The highest paid city employee or official of the 1,847 positions so reported is the Laguna Hills City Manager, with a base salary of $233,592 and total compensation of $378,427,” the report said. “It is clear that this is asubstantial compensation level. As a point of reference in that regard, the Chief Executive Officer for the County of Orange received total compensation of $324,535, according to the State Controller website.

“However, with due consideration to the benchmark compensation levels noted above, the Grand Jury has concluded that there is no individual compensation in any Orange County city which would rise to the level of being considered as abusive.”

But they sure are high, and it's not just Laguna Hills' city manager. Compared to other similar-sized cities, Laguna Hills paid far more for its finance manager, and paid on the high side for other executive posts as well.

TRANSPARENCY

Most of the cities did a dismal job of providing clear information, the grand jury said.

In schoolmarm fashion, it graded cities on what and how they disclosed information on their web sites:

Only one got Fs across the board-- Seal Beach, which is the only city to not post any compensation information on its web site.

The vast majority got Cs and Ds for content and clarity.

Fullerton scored the best, with three Bs,

followed by Laguna Woods, with two Bs and a C.

HOW TO FIX?

The grand jury has a vision to make things right:

Laguna Hills should "conduct a compensation review of top officials," it said.

Newport Beach and Laguna Beach should "conduct a review of their organizations to reconcile the necessity of maintaining a relatively large number of upper level positions in relation to their populations."

The employment contracts of all city executives should be posted on the internet in an easily accessible manner.

All cities should report compensation information on the Internet in an easily accessible manner -- and it provides a "Compensation Disclosure Model that they can follow to figure out what to include (in addition to base salary, the grand jury included total benefits and other pay, including fees, deferred compensation, bonus pay, insurance premiums, auto allowance, pension contributions, and pay in lieu of time off).

They charted base salary and benefits for 11 – count ‘em, 11! -- municipal management positions, and we'll be bringing those charts to you over the next several weeks. In addition collecting detail on city managers, the grand jury got numbers on city council members, city clerks, engineers, and top officials in finance, public works, parks and recreation, community development, human resources, information technology and building departments.

The grand jury excluded police, fire, electric utility and Great Park employees from its analysis.

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